TWO Brentwood journalists corrupted public officials "on a grand scale" to boost profits and further their agenda, a jury has been told.

Six senior staff and journalists at The Sun, including picture editor John Edwards, 50 and ex-managing editor Graham Dudman, 51 - both from the town - bought confidential information about members of the Royal family, celebrities, notorious inmates, "the famous, not so famous and the infamous", Kingston Crown Court heard.

They allegedly paid off police officers, members of the Armed Forces, prison officials and staff at Broadmoor Hospital who sold them stories for almost a decade.

Peter Wright QC, for the Crown, told the jury of three women and nine men: "This trial is about a series of corrupt agreements between staff and journalists at The Sun newspaper on the one hand, and various public officials on the other.

"It concerns corrupt agreements entered into by them, the purpose of which was to provide journalists at the newspaper with confidential information to which the various public officials had access by virtue of their employment, and they were doing it in return for payment.

"This was not, we say, a public servant who was whistle-blowing on some grave miscarriage or act of the state or public body which it was considered the public needed to be aware of and respond to, which is what investigative journalism is all about.

"We say this was craven conduct directed by the greed on the part of the public servants that they could sell information, and journalists and management at The Sun were prepared to pay for it.

"They were prepared to nurture and cultivate a relationship in which there was provision of confidential information in return for payment.

"The case concerns activities involving staff and journalists at The Sun that started as long ago as 2001/2002 and a course of conduct that was deployed in which payments were made to public officials for confidential information over the best part of a decade ending in 2011.

"It was, we say, corruption on a grand scale."

The men connived together as part of an "over-arching" plot and also separately in "sub-conspiracies", prosecutors say.

Sun head of news Chris Pharo faces a total of six charges of conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office, while ex-managing editor Graham Dudman and ex-Sun deputy news editor Ben O'Driscoll are accused of four.

Thames Valley district reporter Jamie Pyatt, and picture editor John Edwards are charged with three counts each and ex-Sun reporter John Troup is accused of two counts.

Pharo, 45, of Sandhurst; Pyatt, 51, of Windsor; O'Driscoll, 38, of Windsor; Troup, 49, of Saffron Walden, Dudman and Edwards deny the charges against them.

Mr Wright said their motivation "was not public interest but profit" and "in order to further their own agenda".

"The principal interest, we say, of the journalists and staff at The Sun, we say, was good copy," he told the jury.

"Newsworthiness - 'splashes' as they are called in the trade, and 'exclusives'.

"The sort of stories that would attract reader interest and boost sales in the daily competition for readership and profitability of a newspaper in the national media."

The prosecutor denied that the trial was an attack on press freedom to report stories that are in the public interest.

He said that the Crown accepted "as a matter of important principle the freedom of the press is vital".

But he added that the freedom of the press is "not absolute".

"The criminal law applies to journalists as well as the rest of us," he said.

"Corrupting public officials with money in return for the provision to journalists of confidential material held or obtained by them by virtue of their public office is, we say, a crime."

The trial continues.